Kitchen equipment we love

A snapshot of the joyful chaos that is our farm kitchen (taken last December — hence the cabbage). Note the big chef knife and beautiful cutting board. Ooh la la! Those are some tools!

We cook. A lot. By American standards, our method of cooking is ridiculous. “From scratch” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Tonight’s dinner began with harvesting vegetables from the greenhouse. Other nights, to make meatloaf we must first grind the meat.

Although we spend a lot of time in our kitchen, we like love it this way. The food we eat is … amazing. If nothing else keeps us committed to our own personal farm adventures, the food will keep us hooked forever.

I’ve noted here before that most of what we eat is simple. To help illustrate this point, we currently own three cookbooks (The Ball Blue Book for canning info, a cheesemaking book, and The Joy of Cooking). We used to own more, and I like reading cookbooks sometimes, but mostly the recipes are too “complicated” and have more ingredients than we ever have on hand. I really don’t consider us “foodies” at all. For us, it’s simple farm food, prepared well and with intention. I consider our food to be extremely humble. Humbly delicious, perhaps, but humble nonetheless.

That being said, because we spend so much time preparing food in our kitchen, Casey and appreciate good equipment. A while back I read a book by a chef, in which she dismissed the notion of needing good quality kitchen equipment. She went on to say that makes great food with stuff she picked up second hand, including an old banged up stock pot and rusty knife. This boggled my mind, because in my experience, having the right equipment makes a huge difference in the kitchen — both in terms of the pleasure of being there and in what is possible. Especially with pots — how many batches of soup or tomato sauce have been burned because of bad pots? Many in our kitchen, and I’m sure infinite more elsewhere.

Since your experience of the farm is primarily through your kitchen, I thought it’d be fun to share our favorite pieces of kitchen equipment in the hopes that something here is inspiring or useful as you prepare food for your family. I should warn you; these are not cheap items. Although Casey and I earn a modest income and buy clothes secondhand and all that, having a few good pieces of equipment in the kitchen is a priority for us. And, honestly, I walk into a lot of kitchens with loads of cheaper stuff — much of which is never used (prime example: the knife block loaded with all sorts of different knives that most people never need or even know how to use!). I’m against buying pots/pans and knives as “sets” — I’d always rather have a few very good quality items that get used every day. (Also, upon reflection, a lot of these items were gifts! Apparently, our loved ones know where our passions lie!)

Without further ado, here are some of the most loved items in our kitchen (some “high end” and some very humble but useful!). We use most of these items several times per week if not daily. It’s not a complete list, but it hits the highlights:

Knives and cutting boards — This is where it all begins in our kitchen — at the cutting board. We own several, but the most beautiful is the one pictured above, made locally by Andre Jaillet (now part of AJJA Wood, available for purchase at the Growing Wild booth at the Saturday Grange Market). I can’t even begin to imagine how many vegetables have graced this cutting board in the three years we’ve owned it! To go with the cutting board: a knife. In our house, the 10″ chef knife gets almost all the action. This is a beast of a knife. Some people are intimidated by such a long blade, but if you’ve ever used a beautifully rocking chef knife, you’ll understand what a joy it can be to slice through chard! Second runner up for cutting tools is our paring knife. Rarely, we’ll use a serrated knife for cutting tomatoes or other items. We also own a few smaller cutting boards and two “safety” knives so that kids can join us in chopping food for dinner, which they do regularly (fun and messy!)

Immersion or hand blender — I am amazed that there are still people in the world who don’t own one of these blenders! If you’ve never seen one, an immersion blender is simply the turning blades of a blender … on a stick! (with a guard of course) Which means that rather than putting liquid in the blender, you put the blender in the liquid. Great for pureed soups and much more. We use ours daily — sometimes to make fun smoothie-like drinks for the kids, but more often to make salad dressing (see longer description below with the salad recipe). As with all these tools, the more expensive versions are worth the money — ours is all metal on the shaft and blade and quite powerful. It can blend frozen berries, for example. I clean it immediately after use (super simple!), which makes it always available.

Crock pot — Casey and I acquired our first crock pot last summer and it quickly became an integral part of our kitchen. We use it almost exclusively for slow-cooking meat. In fact, almost every day we have the crock pot going with some kind of meat in it. Often, we don’t even know what we’re going to do with the meat, but it’s handy to have cooked meat available when it comes time to make dinner! (We add most of the meat to veggie-heavy stews.) The key to our crock pot experience was a little secret my mom discovered: we put the meat in without liquid. So, for example, we’ll put a big beef roast in the crock pot with just salt (and maybe a few onions or garlic) and then cook it all day that way. The juices and fats will run out and self-baste the meat. The results are out-of-this-world. The meat just falls apart, but unlike meat stewed in liquid, it retains powerful meaty flavor and texture. We’re totally hooked.

Vegetable peeler — No surprises here — we use our veggie peeler to … peel vegetables — especially in the winter, when stored root vegetables make up a good chunk of our diet. A humble piece of equipment that can transform a stored carrot into a shiny orange jewel!

Five gallon stainless steel stock pot — This is a big pot! I wouldn’t have believed it a few years ago, but we use this enormous pot several times per week. If you’ve never cooked in large volumes like this, it’s especially important to have a thick bottom on your pot. Even if you stir regularly, a thin bottom pot of this size would inevitably burn food if used at a higher heat. Our pot is marketed as a “never burn” pot, and I have moments of distraction (kids in the house while cooking!) that would have led to totally ruined food without this pot! We use it to make big batches of food (when sharing with friends or to have leftovers), make cheese, cook tomato sauce, and make bone broth.

5.5 quart saute pan — I love this pan so much; I believe this is at least the second mention of it in a newsletter. I bought this in order to help me make slightly bigger batches of food for dinner every night so that we would routinely have leftovers. This was the largest saute style pan I could find. It’s awesome.

Food processor — I probably don’t need to convince many other people about the merits of a quality food processor, but I was a reluctant food processor user. Finally, a few years ago, Casey and I realized that — really — you just can’t make good pesto without one. Plus, it’s handy for doing a very fine chop on veggies for things like my “chopped salads” or items to be fermented (or chard for meatloaf! see recipe below!). And, now that our baking is grain-free, I even sometimes use it for mixing batter for muffins too!

Jelly roll pans — Casey’s mom has given us three of these large roasting pans over the years. They are so big that one totally fills the oven space in our small range (a 20″ electric apartment model, by the way! Only one large burner!). But we love this about the pan — when we fill it, we know we are maximizing the roasting space in our oven, and the high lip holds all the vegetables and fat nicely. Long-time readers will know how much we love roasting vegetables. Jelly roll pans are how we do it. They’re also handy for occasionally roasting a chicken or duck too (you need the lip to contain all those tasty drippings!).

Deep freeze freezer — We freeze a lot of stuff through the year — meat, berries, corn, peppers, tomatoes, etc. It’s nice to have a way to quickly and effectively put food up (including berries for making jam later, when it is calmer). In fact, just this weekend I stocked up on freezer bags so that we’re ready for the season!

White restaurant-style plates — Casey actually surprised me at Christmas two years ago by giving me something I’d been wanting since we were married: a set of perfectly white, restaurant-style dinner plates (before that our dinnerware was still mismatched thrift store finds!). I love these plates so much and definitely consider them to be a integral part of the eating experience at our house. They are moderate in size, meaning that the plate looks full without being over-loaded (this corresponds with some easy weight-loss on our part — coincidence?). And, holy moly, that perfectly white palette just really makes the food look gorgeous. The first time we served up our normal fare onto these plates, I almost fell over. The same food just popped out at me and suddenly looked like seriously gourmet stuff! There’s a reason that restaurants use plain white plates!

Mason jars — These are, of course, the ubiquitous canning jars. They have started showing up in the local stores as the season arrives (I just canned our first batch of jam today, in fact! From all the frozen berries that were left in our freezer from last year!). We always have loads of these around, and we use them for so much more than just canning! They make great food storage containers for leftovers, plus we use them for storing all kinds of dairy in our fridge (cream, milk, kefir, cheese, etc.). We also use quart and half-gallon jars for small-batches of fermented foods (with an air lock). And they even make great drinking glasses for potlucks!

Sundries — We’ve got other stuff we use too — a few sauce pans of various sizes. Another smaller stock pot (also with a seriously thick bottom). A pressure canner. Thermometers. We like cast iron pans for cooking eggs and reheating leftovers and own two of those. Some more random cooking utensils (wood spoons and the like — including two very wide flat flippers for frying eggs). Silicone oven mitts (a gift — very awesome!). Mixing bowls. A pyrex baking dish. Measuring spoons and the like …

If you’re wondering, we still use mostly mismatched second-hand utensils — although I’d love to change that someday (but the kids seem to lose them? How? Where?). But the items we do use were mostly purchased with great intention, and overall there’s just Not That Much in our kitchen. In fact, I recently took down some shelves to help us keep our kitchen storage devoted to The Things We Really Use and Love. If you are wondering, here are things we do not have in our kitchen: a microwave (we reheat leftovers in a skillet or the oven), a dishwasher, a toaster oven, various specialized gadgets, and I don’t even know what else! — all of which may be 100% appropriate and frequently used in another kitchen. Because, without a doubt, a well-loved kitchen is a unique reflection of its occupants!

Now, with writing this newsletter, I’m not saying it’s impossible to cook foods without all of these Good Things. By no means! But, in my experience, it’s a lot more fun and pleasurable, for example, to chop loads of greens with a good (big) knife. And I like it when my tomato sauce doesn’t get burned! (Which it did, almost invariably, with a few thin-bottom stock pots that we used to own.) For us, these tools are a worthwhile investment. Either way, I hope that all our eaters approach their own kitchens with intention and joy. Ours is a place of perpetual activity — often more than a little chaos as kids “help” me prepare dinner from scratch. But, it’s also an environment that Casey and I both love to work in. We enjoy being in the center of our home, working with the food we spend our days growing. ‘Tis a true pleasure.

What you cook — whatever you use — may you enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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Chard meatloaf: A few weeks ago, I posted about how nettles are so awesome, and how we were using them in all kinds of dishes, including meatloaf! Well that concept of greens + eggs + ground meat (+ ketchup) has continued being useful in our house, even after the end of nettle season. Most recently I’ve tried it with chard, and the kids loved it (needless to say, so did Casey and I, but that’s not really news, is it?). To prepare the chard, I pull about one bunch worth of leaves off the stem and process them in the food processor. Then I mix the greens with some eggs, ground meat, and a bit of ketchup (plus salt and pepper). I like to use about five or six eggs, but that definitely makes it “egg-ier” — fewer eggs and it would be more meatloaf-like. I pour the mixture into a well-greased pan and bake until cooked through and starting to get brown and crispy on top and on the edges. This is a very flexible recipe that can go a lot of different ways with different proportions and spices. We serve it with ketchup, which may be a big part of why the kids like it! You think?

Seriously simple and satisfying salads: Casey and I have been loving fresh spring salads lately! It’s such a treat to add some dressed tender greens to our meals — or sometimes even make the salad itself the center of the plate (and pile on lots of good toppings). For me, there are two keys to a good salad. First is to sort and chop/tear the greens. I do this almost unconsciously now. Even when the greens from the farm are small enough, I still like to put them on a cutting board and quickly sort through the leaves as I put them into a bowl. If they are bigger, I will chop them. Other times, when most of it is already small, this process also allows me to spot check for slugs and such! Seriously, this is a quick process, and for me it makes a big difference. I have a small mouth and like to have bite-sized pieces of lettuce in my salads!

Second: a good dressing. Casey and I haven’t purchased a prepared dressing in years and years and years. I can’t even remember the last time. Honestly, we just don’t like them. They usually contain ingredients we don’t love (including emulsifiers and sugar and who knows what), and the ones that don’t contain weird things are hard to emulsify by shaking the jar! And then there’s that thing where the dressing always drips on the paper around the neck and makes a gross grease stain and gets the shelf in the fridge oily too. We just don’t like the experience.

Plus, making salad dressing at home is easier than easy. I mean, E-A-S-Y. So easy that I make a batch of dressing every single time we eat salad. I like to just make enough for that particular meal, because then there’s no waste. Here’s how I do it:

I grab some kind of fat/creamy stuff: olive oil, mayonnaise (good stuff, please!), yogurt, and/or soft cheese. I put some of it in a wide mouth pint-sized mason jar. Then I add some vinegar (red wine, apple cider, or balsamic) and pour some of this in too. The ratio between the two is about 3:1 or 4:1 — it sort of depends on the ingredients. For example, I find red wine vinegar to be less strong than the other two, so sometimes I add a bit more. Then I add some salt and pepper and maybe a clove of garlic (or chunks of green garlic or garlic scapes). Finally — this is the magic folks — I grab my immersion blender and I blend it in the jar (this is why I noted that I use a wide mouth jar — otherwise I couldn’t fit my blender!). Blending thoroughly takes 5-10 seconds. Perfect emulsion every time. GORGEOUS dressing — it will blow your mind. No more oil and vinegar separating out and then running to the bottom of the salad bowl. Emulsified dressing actually coats and sticks to the leaves of the salad. It’s wonderful. I like to toss our salad in a large bowl and then serve it dressed. I find that tossing works best with hands (clean, of course). That’s the best method I’ve found for evenly coating all the leaves — it’s gentle and effective. Then I serve it up and add any toppings! It took much longer to write all this out than it takes for me to actually prepare these satisfying salads!!!!

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Totally not-farm related awesome event happening this weekend! This Saturday, the McMinnville Women’s Choir is hosting a concert with two other singing groups. If you’ve wondered why we moved the end of the CSA pick-up to 6 pm, it was exclusively so that Casey could be home in time to tag me out so I could attend weekly choir practice. It was that important! The concert should be lots of fun, and many of the ladies involved in the concert are CSA members and/or otherwise farm community members! Join us! More details below:

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Shelling peas
• Strawberries — Weren’t these an awesome treat last week? We were so excited to share them with you! I keep forgetting that fruit is a relatively new component of our “Vegetable” CSA. It still feels new to us too — so much so that I forget to mention it in our brochures and such! This year, in addition to the usual fresh vegetables, we will also provide cherries, raspberries, plums, apples, and possibly more! Since all these plantings are still getting established, fruit might not be included every single week, but regularly (and in future years, it probably will be part of every week!).
• Cut lettuce mix
• Head lettuce
  
• Chard
• Cabbage rapini
  
• Garlic scapes
  
• Spring shallots